The Outer Critics Circle bestowed its award for outstanding new Broadway play to God of Carnage Monday in New York. The play about two sets of parents brought together because of a spat between their children also earned co-star Marcia Gay Harden the prize for outstanding actress in a play. The Norman

By Lee, Veronica Alan Ayckbourn, so theatre lore has it, is the second-most performed British playwright after Shakespeare. So why has he become so unfashionable among theatre cognoscenti? Partly, it's his own doing.

By Alice Jones THEATRE REVIEWS Yasmina Reza has returned to the UK for the first time since 2000, hoping to emulate the success of her 1994 play, Art, reuniting with its director, Matthew Warchus, and the playwright Christopher Hampton, who translates.

By Kate Bassett Theatre THE BIG TICKET God of Carnage Gielgud LONDON Never So Good Lyttelton LONDON Projectile vomiting, bilious sarcasm and a real-life power cut - only the dodgy philosophy mars a perfect farce 'I feel like showing myself in a horrible light!" barks Ken Stott's infuriated Michel, refusing to keep up politically correct appearances in Yasmina Reza's darkening comedy, God of Carnage.

By Alice Jones First Night GOD OF CARNAGE Gielgud Theatre LONDON Imagine the most supremely awkward social situation you can and multiply it tenfold.